This is a series of posts to build a M3 Lab from beginning to end so I get a better understanding of how all the components fit together. This is purely as a lab and doesn’t do any tuning and may even miss some version requirements.

In this section I’ll touch on the Regional Modifications, creating the autojobs and some interesting things I’ve discovered.

Because there is a lot in the way of screenshots (these would have been invaluable as I was following the install guides!), I’m going to break this up in to 5 posts:

• Part 1 – Preparing the Servers, Installing SQL Server, LCM and loading the Foundational Components
• Part 2 – Installing the Business Engine, License Server and Create an Environment
• Part 3 – Installing and Creating the Grid
• Part 4 – Installing Smart Office
• Part 5 – All the fiddly bits, Regional Modifications, Autojobs

Almost at the end of the journey now…

Installing the Regional Modifications

Here we shall add the regional modifications to M3.
Reference: M3BEIG_14.1.2.0_W.pdf (Install Base to an Additional Component)

Most of this isn’t new based on what we’ve already done, but we’ll document it anyway

1. In LCM, right click M3BE_14.1.2 -> M3 Business Engine 14.1.2 -> Upload M3BE package
2. Select the directory you have the updates in (C:\Temp in my case) and select the regional mods
   
3. Click finish on the summary
   
4. You’ll be asked to verify the package
   
   Click Yes
5. All going well you’ll get a notification that registration was successful
   
6. As we had two packages we need to go through the verify package again
   
7. And ok
   
8. And then we need to install them. Right click M3BE_14.1.2 -> M3 Business Engine 14.1.2 -> Install Additional Components
   
9. Select the additional component
   
10. As Smart Office isn’t installed yet, we’ll get a warning
    
11. Likewise with Streamserve
    
12. Summary
    
13. Now we need to associate this with our environment. In LCM right click on our Environment (PROD) -> M3 BE 14.1.2 – Environment -> Environment Configurator
    
14. Click on the Components tab down the bottom
    
15. Click on the plus on the right of the screen
    
16. Provide a name for the new component, I’m using MAU which is what we use at work
    
17. Key in the description, everything else should be filled in for you
    
18. Hit the save button
19. We now need to establish a connection between the M3 company and these market mods. Run MNS102. In MNS102 I am going to create a configuration called IFL_MAU
    
20. I’m going to call it IFL Market Mods and then select the Config comp (you can use the lookup or type it in) will be MAU
    
    Click Next to set.
    Note: I am using the M3 Installation Company (company 1), I have been told that touching company 1 is a cardinal sin, but as I want to only going through the exercise of installing components, it is sufficient for what I require.
21. Now we need to assocate the configuration with the company. Run MNS100
    
22. Reorder the panels so Panel L is the first
    
23. Right click on Company 1 and select Change
    
    We will enter our System Config as IFL_MAU (you can do a F4 lookup on this field)
24. Click Next and then Close
25. Exit out of Smart Office
26. Note that you really may not need to do this. We have a running system and I’m just going through the motions now.
    Shutdown the PROD environment
    In LCM -> IFL_Prod -> Right Click on M3BE_14.1.2-PROD -> Lawson Grid 10.1.9.0 -> Application -> Stop Application
27. Now we shall create the database for the market mods. LCM -> M3BE_14.1.2 -> Prod, Right Click -> M3 BE 14.1.2 – Environment -> Database -> Create Database
    
28. It will default to MDBADM which is the user that was created when we created our environment. Key in the password you used (I used M3BEProd)
    
29. Change the component to MAU, and it should automatically update the System Configuration (which is what you created in MNS102 and associated in MNS100 – if it isn’t there then the association probably isn’t correct)
30. And as per usual, a summary screen
    
31. And a few seconds later we get the task finished successfully.
    
32. Now we’ll create the Language tables. Right click on PROD -> M3 BE 14.1.2 – Environment -> Database -> Create Database Language Tables
    
33. Log in again with the MDBADM and password of M3BEProd
    
34. I’m selecting the MAU component and the language code of GB, then clicking Add Language
    
35. And the summary screen
    
36. And a couple of seconds later it should be complete.

Creating the Subsystems so it looks like a real M3 System 🙂

With a basic system, the M3 Grid just doesn’t look very impressive, so lets create the autojobs.
(in LCM -> IFL_Prod -> M3BE_14.1.2-PROD, right click -> Lawson Grid 10.1.9.0 -> Application -> Manage Application)


How dull and boring, there’s just nothing interesting happening on this server 😦

1. Start Smart Office and run MNS050
   
2. Click on Actions -> Crt standard
   
3. This will create a new autojob definition – but wait, there’s more.
   
4. Right click on ASK -> Related Options -> Jobs in sbs
   
5. You’ll now be in MNS051
   
6. Click Actions -> Crt standard
   
7. And now we have a whole heap of entries
   
8. Let’s start them eh? Click On Actions -> Start all
   
9. If we look in the Grid now, we see something far more interesting
   
   48 jobs (32 + 16) in the Subsystem:A which is what I’d expect, but I’m a little surprised about it being split in to two subsystems.
10. After a little digging, there is a setting which limits the number of jobs in a subsystem before spawning a new subsystem. By default it appears to be 32 (which if I remember correctly was the old number before 10.1). The person that installed our system increased that so all of the autojobs would be in same system, so up to 48. I’m not sure on the pros and cons of this, but essentially it looks like each subsystem correlates to an instance of Java that gets loaded. So if we look in Task Manager on our M3BE10 server we will see a new java instance start for each of these subsystems.
    To locate the setting go to LCM -> IFL_PROD -> M3BE_14.1.2-PROD, right click -> Lawson Grid 10.1.9.0 -> Application -> Configuration Application
    
11. Click Edit Properties
    
12. And what do we have here? A Subsystem job limit of 32. Let’s change that to 48.
    
13. Restart the environment and take a look.
    
    WTH? We have still spawned two subsystems? Ok, this isn’t a problem – when the autojobs start up a couple of extra jobs start and then shut down. So lets bump the limit up to 52
14. A quick restart and we look a lot better
    

An Interesting Thing

Well, a thing that I found interesting anyways…

I have had issues in the past with processes not shutting down correctly, meaning M3 exhibits some odd behaviour (usually when doing updates). You can always check the running processes on the server in question with Task Manager – go to the Processes tab and display the Command Line column. This will show you the command line to launch what-ever is running. This can be very useful if you have multiple environments and want to determine if say PROD has completely shutdown.

Here we can see multiple java.exe instances. Without the Command line we would have to guess at their purpose. With the Command Line column we can see that the first java.exe is for the license server, the next few are IFL_PROD components etc.

In Closing

As you can probably gather, there’s a lot involved in doing an installation – and at this point there is a fair amount of going backwards and forwards which just adds more time on to an install. And though I think that there is definitely room for improving the entire installation process (and certainly on the basis of my documents, there are far more optimised methods of install than what I have shown), it’s really not too bad.

I though think that we should take a moment to reflect on the poor techies that actually do the installations and then tune them for us for a living and give them a mental pat on the back.